A bibliometric analysis of hydrogen energy literature, 1965-2005

The present study explores the characteristics of hydrogen energy literature from 1965 to 2005 based on the database of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and its implication using the bibliometric techniques. The results of this work reveal that the literature on hydrogen energy grows exponentially with all annual growth rate of about 18% for the last decade. Most of document type is in the form of journal articles or meeting abstracts, constituting 90.17% of the total literature and English is the predominant language (94.66%). USA, Japan and China are the three biggest contributing countries on hydrogen energy literature publishing, 25.8%, 14.9%, 7.7%, respectively. The Chinese Academy of Sciences in China is the largest contributor publishing 308 papers. The journal literature on hydrogen energy does not confirm the typical S-shape for the Bradford-Zipf plot, but five core journals, i.e. International Journal of hydrogen Energy, Journal of Power Source, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Solid State Ionics, and Electrochimica Act, contributing about 41% can be identified. Journals with highly cited articles and most highly cited articles are also identified, in which the most highly cited article receives more than 1,000 citations.